"There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, 66 To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more." Ode on Immortality. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, And cometh from afar: But trailing clouds of glory do we come' At length the man perceives it die away, Ibid. "The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction." Ibid. "In years that bring the philosophic mind." Ibid. "To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." Ibid. "The good die young And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust The Excursion. There is only one way to study Wordsworth. He confided his secrets to his lyre. To it he communicated his feelings and his thoughts on every occasion of public and private interest. He wrote as he lived and he lived as he wrote. Hence his life is written in his works, and his works to a great extent are unintelligible without a knowledge of his life. His poems to be studied profitably should therefore be read chronologically. His works must be taken as a whole. They must be read with habitual reference to the time in which they were composed. A complete key for this sort of study will be found in the " Memoirs of William Wordsworth by Christopher Wordsworth, Canon of Westminster, published 1851 by Edward Moxon, London. QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 1. Discuss Wordsworth's place in English literature. 2. Why does it take time, study, and maturity to make one an enthusiastic Wordsworthian? 3. Compare Wordsworth's ancestry, education, poetry, and character with Milton's, Pope's, and Burns's. 4. By what poets was he influenced at the beginning of his literary career? 5. Discuss his fondness for wandering and his attitude toward Nature. 6. How was he affected by the French Revolution? 7. Write a sketch of his friendship with Coleridge. 8. State precisely the aims of the two poets in "Lyrical Ballads." 9. Does Wordsworth possess the "high seriousness that characterizes the greatest poets? Why do you think so? 10. Quote from his poems the ten lines that you like best. 66 66 Suggested Readings.-The sonnet, The World is too much with us, ""The Solitary Reaper," "Ode on Intimations of Immortality,' "Daffodils," Michael," The French Revolution," Character of the Happy Warrior' and the "Ode to Duty are representative of Wordsworth's various forms. The prefaces to the early editions are most revealing of the poet's purpose. Professor George McLean Harper's Wordsworth" is an excellent mine for further investigation. 66 CHAPTER XXIX SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832) Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue Than sceptered king or laurelled conqueror knows, -Wordsworth. "When I am very ill indeed I can read Scott's novels, and they are almost the only books I can then read."-Coleridge. SIR WALTER SCOTT has three titles to distinction. First, he wrote three great narrative poems," The Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion," and "The Lady of the Lake "; second, he was the author of twenty-nine of the most fascinating novels ever penned; and, third, in his old age, when overwhelmed by debts contracted through the incompetence of business partners, he heroically set himself to the task of repaying their obligations, though he might have availed himself of the bankrupt laws. As Thomas Carlyle says, no sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of time. Every Scotchman has a pedigree. One of Scott's ancestors was a Walter Scott who, being captured and given his choice of being hanged or marrying meikle-mouthed Meg, the ugliest of Sir Gideon Murray's daughters, wisely chose the lady, who acquired great skill in pickling the beef which her husband stole. Another was a chieftain named Beardie, so called because, after the Stuart kings were expelled, he ceased to use a razor. Scott's father was an attorney, or, to be technical, a Writer to the Signet. Walter was born August 15, 1771, in Edinburgh. When he was eighteen months old, a fever made him lame for life. In the hope of curing this deformity, he was sent to live at Sandy Knowe, the farm of his paternal grandfather. There he was swathed in the warm hides of newly slain sheep, nourished on mountain air, contracted a strong antipathy to George Washington, drank in tales of border warfare from the lips of his grandfather, and learned to shout the ballad of Hardyknute, which disgusted the parish clergyman, who said: "One may as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as where that child is." In his fourth year the child was sent to Bath, a famous English watering place, to have his leg treated. Here he lived about a year without any particular benefit except what he derived from being taken by an indulgent uncle to see 66 As You Like It." He was charmed by the witchery of the play but so scandalized by the quarrel between Orlando and Oliver that he screamed out: Ain't they brothers? On his return home he found, however, that quarrels do sometimes occur in actual life even between brothers. Indeed he felt so severely the change from being a single indulged brat (his own word) in his kind grandmother's house to one member of a large family that he later took particular pains in the rearing of his own children to guard against habits of self-willed caprice and domination. Among the books which he first read were Pope's " Homer" and Bunyan's" Pilgrim's Progress." In 1778 he began the study of Latin in the high school of Edinburgh. Among his companions here his good nature and inexhaustible fund of stories rendered him more popular with the boys than with the masters, though he finally contrived not only to understand but also to enjoy Cæsar, Livy, Sallust, Virgil, Horace, and Terence. He also stumbled on and read the plays of Shakespeare, the poems of Spenser, Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered," and Percy's" Reliques of Ancient English Poetry." The latter stuck so marvellously in his memory as to cause a certain clergyman to compliment him, but Scott replied: "I remember only what hits my fancy. Probably if you were to preach two hours, I could not remember a word you said." Greek, however, proved such a stumbling block to Scott that he was known in school as The Greek blockhead." 1785 he began in his father's office the study of the law, and though he detested he conquered the barren wilderness, as he called it, of forms and conveyances. His chief interest, however, soon came to be adventurous and romantic literature. Everything which touched on knight-errantry was particularly acceptable to him, and he soon tried to imitate what he so greatly admired. This passion drove him to learn French and Italian in order to read the romantic literature not reachable save in those languages, and to wander far afield both afoot and on horseback for the purpose of viewing the scenes where Scottish history had been made. In spite of his lameness, he sometimes walked as much as thirty miles a day. In the midst of these studies, he completed his apprenticeship in law and was admitted 1792 to the Scottish bar. In As a lawyer he was industrious and reasonably successful. His fees rose from twenty-four pounds in 1792 to 144 pounds in 1797. In 1799 he was appointed Sheriff of Selkirkshire, a post which secured him an annual salary of 300 pounds. In 1806 he obtained in addition the post of Clerk of the Edinburgh Court of Sessions, |